Colored

Monday, May 17, 2010

This week Chris Saunders and I have been shooting a story for The Colors Magazine Dance issue which comes out next quarter (End July I think). I'm writing and he's shooting the incredible story of the incredible dancing that goes with Shangaan Electro. We traveled to Giyani, Limpopo with a guy called Dog, who is a major producer of Shangaan Electro and founder of the Tshe Tsha boys. To me, this musical genre is SA's next big export after The Smarteez and Die Antwoord. The Tshe Tsha boys and the music have had 680 000 hits on Youtube and yet they are not very popular here. But of course, we always have to wait for international media to take interest before we realise that we're sitting on a mine of gold worth digging.

The shoot in Giyani was at a refugee camp that's been there since the early 90s. We shot two Mozambican refugees who arrived in 1994, grew up there and are now mini celebs in Malamulele and Giyani because they dance to make money. My pictures are obviously not as good as Chris' who took pics on this intergalactic quadruple HD camera. I'll ask him for some and post.

Then Saturday, Dog's organised a huge get together of the Tshe Tsha boys, some young girl dancers, young women and men and older women and men to come and show us how it's done in Limpopo. I can't believe I've never seen this kind of dancing merged with this music before. This is more entertaining than any other traditional, modern dancing I've seen.